An analysis of global conflicts and international events by the scrutiny of reason

Monthly Archives: July 2010

I don’t know if Tamils were the first suicide bombers prior to the Palestinians—perhaps some other commentator in this thread could disabuse my ignorance– but my comparison was between Christians and Muslims so your point is completely pointless.

As for American pilots being suicide-bombers in the Battle of Midway, one must really overstretch one’s imagination. You totally disregard the elementary fact that America had never had a self immolating or suicidal cult in its culture, as there is definitively a suicidal cult among Muslim fanatics. So your riposte is intellectually “post less” as it cannot find the address of reason.

Certainly, stating the obvious, Muslims are human, and even the fanatics among them. But the latter, like all fanatics of whatever religion or ideology, are unreasoning humans and therefore are deaf to the dictates of reason. So your appeal to them will be a complete futile and barren exercise by you. And lastly, Thomas Hardy’s poem by which you thought would strengthen your argument is totally misplaced as it applies to reasoning combatants.

Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.

Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.

This discussion occurred on November 2007. It is republished here for one reason only: To show how wrong all the liberal critics of the war were about its outcome.

Kotzabasis says…

How clever of professor Paul Krugman, the glittering commentator of The New York Times, to use his “Four legs good, two legs bad” drill to open a hole to the old debate about the levity of the decision of the Iraq war encapsulated in his “They attacked us, and we are going to strike back.” After failing in all his prognostications about the unwinnable war and showering for years with mockery and disparagement the proponents and supporters of the war, now that the war is being won and Iraq makes its first strides toward democracy –with its corollary that history might after all crown the neocons with the laurels of victory-all he finds to fill the holes of his rotationally fallacious argument is to revive the old squib of the non-connection of Saddam with Osama and hence the conspiratorial origin of the war.

Although there was ample evidence, as provided by the NIE report, of such connection between the intelligent services of Saddam and agents of Osama, the Bush administration after the 9/11 attack was more concerned that this rudimentary connection might take in the near future a gargantuan form that would gravely threaten the strategic interests of the US and indeed, its own land and its people. No astute and responsible government could disregard such a potential threat and not take the defensive-offensive measures to negate it. It was in such a context that the decision to go to war was taken. As well as on the further reason that it’s always more prudent to defeat an irreconcilable and implacable enemy while he is still weak, which is an irreversible canon of war.

Lafaytte says…

Saddam disliked Osama, see here, a minor fact that seems to escape you.

Saddam could not abide Osama’s Saudi Salafist tendencies which for the larger part of Sunni Muslims outside of Saudi Arabia, was far too fundamental. Which is why, when Osama proffered troops in the war (1980-88) against their supposed common enemy (the Iranian Shiites), Saddam refused. And he was not such a fool as to partner with the man responsible for 9/11 later on.

Of course, such subtleties are beyond people who view the world only through the prism of Judeo-Christian religious history. In fact, these subtleties are at the very heart of the modern Muslim world.

But, subtlety is not the forte of this lead-headed administration, which is why Uncle Sam finds himself in very deep sneakers in the Middle East, embroiled in a war he cannot win and only loose with grace.

Kotzabasissays…

Of course Saddam was a secular leader. And indeed, he might have “disliked” and not “trusted’ fanatics. But the game of power politics, which Saddam played as a virtuoso in the Arab world, is not propelled by likes and dislikes. And talking of subtleties, Saddam could see the ascendancy of Osama’s fanatics in the Muslim world and wanted to have contact with them not because of a predilection of amity toward them but because he wanted to control them and use them for his own geopolitical goals. It’s this subtlety that escapes you. And it would be wise for someone who lives in a glass house not to throw stones at others, such as “this lead-headed administration”, as it’s obvious that subtlety is not your forte either.

Lafayttesays…

Once again you are showing your ignorance of Muslim mentality and its subtlety. You wouldn’t be the Ultimate Crusader perchance?

You justified the invasion of Iraq based upon a false argument – an improbable relationship between Hussein and bin Laden. We’ve been through this huckstering nonsense before. Why, on earth, bring it up again?

War in Iraq is indeed good for American business. I do hope you’ve invested your son in it.

Saddam could see the ascendancy of Osama’s fanatics in the Muslim world and wanted to have contact with them not because of a predilection of amity toward them but because he wanted to control them and USE them for his own geopolitical goals.

What is this you’re submission for a James Bond film?

It’s hallucinatory nonsense. Saddam simply wanted to maintain Sunni control over a country that was largely populated by Shiites (who outnumber the Sunnis by 3 to 1).

And it would be wise for someone who lives in a glass house not to throw stones at others … as it’s obvious that subtlety is not your forte either.

Yeah, right. I live in a glass house. Now you are actually getting funny. In fact hilarious.

Bruce Wilder says…

Kotzabasis: “I’m using the metrics of incontrovertible reality: Reduction of violence, the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, the defeat and disarming of the Mahdi militia, and the first strides of Iraq toward democracy . . . ”

I think you are confusing the Right-wing Noise Machine’s continuing kabuki play version of the Iraq War with a reality, with which you are too little acquainted.

“Reduction in violence”, I guess, is the new peace, like pink is the new black — hopefully a short-lived fashion. You have scarcely any idea what the Mahdi Militia is, let alone why the U.S. should be the least bit interested in its vicissitudes.

Al Qaeda in Iraq?? “Defeating” Al Qaeda in Iraq is like defeating swatting a swarm of specially imported may flies with a $3 trillion sledge hammer, which we financed by borrowing from China — not the kind of pointless, extravagant and unnecessary victory any sane person would celebrate.

Kotzabasis says…

Bruce-Starting from the end of your post, victory over a mortal foe is priceless and only the historically fatuous would not celebrate. The “Mahdi Militia” being the major combative militia against the coalition forces and you say that “the US should be the least bit interested in its vicissitudes.” In what kind of strategic cuckoo land are you domiciled?

But two words of your post provide the key to the secrets of your heart, “hopefully” and “unnecessary.”

By ‘discolouring’ the “reduction of violence” by your intellectually invented colours or rather by ‘defining’ it, “like pink is the new black—hopefully a short-lived fashion,” you show pellucidly that your hope lies in a future increase of violence against the Iraqi people and the coalition forces, so you can justify your original misplaced antiwar stand and gratify as well your fervent anti-Bush emotions. And your unnecessary victory over a deadly irreconcilable enemy reveals your historical blindness and ignorance as well as your bereftness of foresight.

Lastly, ironically by your own ‘unborrowed’ sledge hammer you knock yourself off your pedestal of “institutional ethical injunctions” as an outcome of your ‘secret’ wish to see the US defeated in this war, which as a nation is the foundation of your institutional moral existence, according to your own philosophical standards. This is intellectual, spiritual, and ethical suicide at its best.

In the context of the flotilla incident for Clemons to display this intellectually asinine and politically insipid article by Ebinger, in the pages of The Washington Note, it is obvious that Steve relishes his new vocation as agent provocateur. He says, “I myself would not go back to the USS Liberty as a driver to this debate,” but surely he is not so cognitively short sighted not to see that by giving it top billing on the pages of TWN he is driving it into the debate through the back door. He also needs a lot of luck to escape the bolts of criticism for his incendiary involvement in throwing this ‘petrol bomb’ of the USS Liberty at Israel at this critical moment.

The above comment emitted the following responses:

larry birnbaum says,

I agree with kotzabasis above that Clemons’s disclaimer is too cute by half. We aren’t in the realm of honest discussion; at best we are in the realm of emotional acting out. The clue is Ebinger’s use of the word “impunity.” He isn’t focused on the strategic issues here — it is Israel’s attitude that bothers him. It’s all very personalized and emotional.

Which is Clemons’s weakness as an analyst as well.

samuelburke says,

“If Steve relishes his new vocation as agent provocateur”, then
kotzabasis relishes his as agent provocateur squashateur
disqualifier.

you”re oh so erudite Kotz, you have lost your ability to think.

Kotz the accuser.

discredit away.

I think Steve ought to be commended for his coverage of the
many issues that americans are interested in, better to
understand.

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Critics of the War

The Liberal political courtesans Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, not to mention the less charming ones of the New York Times, provocatively egged on by their young 'madam' Arthur Sulzberger, are transforming the sweetness of their profession into the bitterness of their politics against the war.

"If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."
Karl Von Clausewitz